Several survivors of the mass shooting in Southern California also survived last year's massacre in Las Vegas

Police outside the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California
(Image credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

It was "College Country Night" at the packed Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, on Wednesday night when a gunman came in, reportedly wearing black clothing and throwing smoke grenades, and opened fire. Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said early Thursday that at least 13 people are dead, including the gunman and Ventura Sheriff's Sgt. Ron Helus, who died in the hospital. About 10 other people were shot and wounded in the mass shooting, about 40 miles west of Los Angeles.

Borderline is a music venue with a dance floor for line dancing and two-stepping, the Los Angeles Times reports, and several of the people who survived last year's mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas were also at Borderline for this shooting. "A lot of people in the Route 91 situation go here," Chandler Gunn, 23, tells the Times. "There's people that live a whole lifetime without seeing this, and then there's people that have seen it twice." His friend who works at Borderline survived this shooting as well.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.